


It's called...

by lonely_lovebird



Series: Pale K-Science Love [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Bromance, Bromance but better, Brotp, Confessions of pale love, Cuddling, Drift Bond, Drift Side Effects, It's like BrOTP but better, M/M, Newt Has Nightmares, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pale ship fic, discussion of soul mates, soul mates, trigger warning: PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:12:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lonely_lovebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton Geiszler knows that there are no such things as soul mates. He also knows that there's a word for the thing between him and Hermann but he can't exactly put his finger on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's called...

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Paleship Fic. If you are unfamiliar with Homestuck, this means it's mostly platonic love, no kissing. But if you're into BrOTP's, paleshipping is like BrOTPs times a thousand.
> 
> PS Bonus points if you catch the Whedon inspired jokes. (The ones that don't directly refer to Whedon by name.)

Newt doesn't believe in soul mates. This is partially cynicism built after years of heart-breaking and being heart-broken, and the other is the science side of his brain that says it's a pysical impossiblity. He won't argue the existance of a soul, that's purely metaphysical data yet to be collected, but believing there is no such thing as the "perfect other half" means he doesn't have to worry about fucking up with his girlfriends just in case they might have been "the one".

(Science doesn't think to fondly of the mythology behind soul mates and destiny, either. If there was someone who was his perfect half, wouldn't they be his exact opposite? And he's found that quite frankly, he's had enough of people opposite him.)

What the jaeger pilots don't tell him, when he rants about the topic on some off day in the mess hall of the shatterdome, he finds out much later and in far stranger ways. He thinks about their faces, their smiles hiding something. Nothing sinister, but something mischevious as they share significant glances as Newt rambles on about how the concept of souls resonating with each other is scientifically improbable. (It's just something he does to keep his mind occupied, the rambling.)

The thing they aren't telling him is that the concept of soul mates is much simpler. It's two people who have seen each others darkness and accept each other fully as they are. Two people who understand each other better than they understand themselves. This is something that can be achieved usually only after fifty years of marriage, if at all.

The Drift makes soul mates in under two minutes.

And soul mates can come in the strangest of ways. Newt had toyed with the idea of what it would be like to have a soul mate, to be connected to someone and crave their presence in his life. He thought it would be more physical than emotional, but his concept of soul mates was directly tied to his sexuality. He simply didn't realize.

It was so much more than that. It was impossible and wonderful and strange. He hadn't meshed his soul with the kaiju, that was impossible. He wasn't even sure kaiju's had souls. But in that moment that he put his mind together with Hermann, and seen Hermann as a boy crying in a corner, being laughed at, and being the amazing boy genius he knew Hermann had always been, something clicked.

If he'd talked with the jaeger pilots instead of talking at them, maybe they would have told him the adverse affects of having a soul mate. Of just wanting to be in the same room as them, of wanting nothing more than to lean against them to be reminded that another human being was there for you.

Of the way his whole being felt like there was a gaping hole in it when Hermann wasn't around. The way it got worse the longer they were apart. The abject nothingness he felt when left alone for too long.

Hermann had gone to be with his wife and his newborn baby. And nothing had made Newt feel happier. He just wished that he could have been with him. He'd seen Hermann and Vanessa fall in love and it was beautiful. He loved Vanessa the way he loved Hermann, with his whole soul. He didn't even really know her but he knew she was the one for Hermann.

He recieved emails from Hermann and he wondered frequently if he was the only one feeling the adverse effects of the Drift. His colleague - his friend - seemed his usual self, stoic yet sarcastic, and full to the brim of snide comments on Newt's behavior even when he wasn't around.

Meanwhile, Newt kept busy with the post-Kaiju clean up. He was still going through the papers in the Hong Kong research lab, deciding what was absolutely necessary for future research into helping restore the world after the epidemic of Kaiju Blue.

He was going to miss the Shatterdomes, the noise, the people, the jaegers. But he wasn't going to miss the terror, the stress, and the overwhelming feeling that his life could end any day.

Mako and Raleigh stopped to say goodbye as he was answering an email from Hermann, with photos of his new baby.

"Newt, are you okay?" It was Mako, who asked. She had grown up so much from the little girl who had watched Totoro on the couch with him on rainy days when the Marshall - his throat closed - had been out on jaeger duty.

He smiled, but it wasn't genuine. "I'll be fine, Mako. It's just so strange, after all we went through. After everything, and the world just wants us to pack up and go back to the way things were."

Mako grapsed Raleigh's hand tightly. "It will never go back to the way things were."

And she was right. There was no going back from this. No going back after what they had seen and done. No going back after the pain and the loss and the heartache.

Tendo stopped by and Mako slowly became sidetracked, discussing the potential application of jaeger tech in the real world. She left Raleigh and Newt alone, and Newt finally took the initiative and asked the question he'd been dying to know.

"What are your thoughts on soul mates?"

Raleigh, to his surprise, didn't laugh. He pulled a thoughtful face then looked at Mako. "I think they exist. Maybe not the way everyone thinks, not some predestined love. But friendship of the ultimate kind. And sometimes people are lucky to find their soulmate in their husband or wife, but maybe..." He trailed off, watching as Mako laughed brightly at something Tendo had said. "Maybe some of us just have a friend who is our soul mate. Someone who completes us in a way no one else can."

He gave Newt a long look. "You're feeling the post-Drift, aren't you?" 

After the helicopters had brought back Mako and Raleigh, there had been several hours of story telling, with tears and hugs and emotions and Newt pretended he hadn't cried. But he and Hermann had explained how they had drifted with the infant kaiju, sharing the neural load, and it had been then that Mako and Raleigh gave him a significant look that he'd seen so many times before.

Newt sighed. "I'm feeling something."

"Well, good luck, Newt, I hope that everything works out for you." There was almost an unspoken addendum - and Hermann.  
Or maybe Newt was just crazy.

 

Newt went to sleep in his bed on the third to last night in Hong Kong, the same way he always did, watching bootlegged kaiju anime in his boxers and a shirt from college that had a few holes in the shoulders.

In his dream he was a kaiju.

Newt had had nightmares before, all of them brought on by his initial drift with the kaiju, when he had taken on the neural load alone. He knew it was so because the memories were disntinctly different than the ones of the baby kaiju. In the brain of the adult kaiju there had more blood and carnage.

And this dream was much the same. He was destroying the Shatterdome, ripping it to pieces, tearing away inch by inch until he had dug in so far that he was pulling the roof off the research lab and looking down in on an oblivious Hermann.

He looked the same, big coat with the fur lined hood, leaning heavily on his cane as he inspected his chalkboards. Newt screamed at him to run, he couldn't stop himself, but all that came out was a kaiju roar.

It was as if Hermann hadn't heard him.

Huge kaiju claws were extending towards Hermann and Newt wanted the dream to end. There were no more kaiju, he was not a kaiju, he would never hurt Hermann, this was all a dream - this was all a dream, just a dream, a dream, a dream, a dream -

His claw tips were centimeters from the edge of Hermann's jacket when Newt ripped himself from the dream, bolting upright in bed and screaming hoarsly.

He was drenched in sweat. The room was less dark than it had been when he had finally turned off the anime and placed his tablet under his pillow. It was probably five in the morning, but there wasn't a clock around. There was movement from the door.

Newt nearly panicked. 

Then he heard the familiar click of a cane on metal flooring and it was as if all the tension built up in him seeped out of his pores and away, far far away. The figure shifted and Newt scrambled for his glasses.

"Newton?" the tone was hesitant, almost fearful.

Newt cleared his throat. "H-hey, Hermann, sorry I..." What could he say to that? Sorry I woke from a nightmare screaming your name?

Newt watched as the figure of Hermann Gottleib shuffled into his room, not bothering with the light as there was plenty from the hall spilling across his floor. The bed sank slightly as Hermann perched on the edge.

For a moment Newt thought he must be dreaming, then he remembered that Hermann had told him he would be coming back to Hong Kong to collect his research before he moved it all back to Germany.

There was silence for a few tender moments as Newt tried to make out the general expression of Hermann's face. He was hunched over on the bed, leaning heavily on the cane, shifted slightly away so the light cast strange shadows on the underside of his cheekbones.

"Do you ever feel empty, after...after the Drift?" Hermann asked, breaking the silence. Relief threatened to spill all over Newt's insides.

"Yeah," his voice was hoarse. "Yeah, like, way a lot."

Hermann sighed. Then there was silence again. Newt was grateful. It was nice, having Hermann in the room, it gave him a feeling of peace and calmness he hadn't felt in years. But at the same time the elephant in the room was a little stifling.

"Do you believe in soul mates?" Newt finally asked.

"Newton, I'm not going to discuss such ridiculous notions as destiny and souls --"

Newt held up a hand. "Easy, Doctor, I'm just asking a simple question, I don't care how or why, but do you believe in soul mates?"

"In a romantic sense of the word?"

"In any sense."

"I have seen jaeger pilots go into the drift with barely any modicum of respect for the other, yet unflappable compatability scores, and come out of the drift with deep caring and spiritual love that I don't understand, leading me to find it possible to believe in the concept of souls being compatible on a basic level contributing to this phenomenon."

Newt smiled. The typical Hermann response. He wondered if Vanessa was in the Shatterdome with their son, Stacker, or if Hermann had come by himself. He couldn't imagine Vanessa letting Hermann leave agian so soon.

"I've been having nightmares, since I went home," Hermann said quietly. "Vanessa has been worrying constantly, and I fear she may be right. My drift with the kaiju has fundamentally damaged my brain."

Newt scoffed. "Then what do you think it did to me? I drifted with a kaiju twice!"

"But I am not you, Newton." He sounded defeated. He sighed deeply. "I missed you, contrary to what I'm sure you assumed."

"I missed you too. But I...I'm really glad you got to go back to be there when Vanessa had the baby."

"She wants to meet you, and I want you to meet Stacker. He's beautiful, with her hair and eyes, and most likely he inherited my brains but at least he'll be advantaged when he reaches primary school age, unlike me." The image of Hermann as a boy, hiding in a corner, knees drawn in and arms over his head flashed through Newt's mind like lighting.

"Do you regret the drift?" he asked Hermann seriously. "Because I feel like after that, you took part of me and left part of you behind. Like in my soul, Hermann."

"...I do not regret the Drift, I only regret that I left and didn't take you with me."

That was all Newt needed to hear before he engulfed Hermann in an all encompassing embrace, arms wound tightly around his neck. It felt nice. It wasn't sexual, it transcended the physical. It was spiritual, as if some kind of connection that had been made was reconnecting - a ghost-drift of their souls. Just knowing that the person who held all your secrets was safe beside you.

Hesitantly, Hermann wrapped his arms around Newt and they stayed perfectly still as the minutes ticked by. Then Hermann broke the silence.

"What are we going to call this thing that we have?"

Newt smiled into the crook of Hermann's neck. He thought lazily for a moment, feeling for once that his brain wasn't firing all cylinders at maximum power - he had time to sit and think because Hermann wasn't going anywhere.

"Platonic hetero-lifemates?"

Hermann almost chuckled. Almost. "That's far too convoluted, Newton. I was thinking along the lines of Drift Companions."

"Too Sci-Fi."

"We just defeated giant alien monsters that came from a portal to another dimension at the bottom of the sea, Newton." They slowly relaxed until they were reclining on the bed, still wrapped in the warmth of the other.

"I don't think Vanessa would like me introducing myself as your drift companion, dude. Too Joss Whedon for this sci-fi verse." Newt said, as stoically as possible. "If anything, we're like non-sexual boyfriends but I think that no one will get that."

They stayed together in the silence that followed thinking over the gravity of Newt's statement. Boyfriends did imply some sort of physical attraction but there really never had been. The Drift couldn't put something that wasn't there. It simply enhanced the potential of all relationships with it's intimacy.

Friends became something akin to lovers, but deeper and far more real.

"There's a word for this, but I don't really want to puzzle it out right now, so actually I'm going to go to sleep and you're going to stay here because if you leave I'll probably have nightmares again where you die and I don't want to deal with that trauma right now, Hermann," Newt prattled before rearranging them on the bed so that Newt had his head cushioned on Hermann's shoulder.

He could practically feel Hermann's smile. "Very well. We can have a chat when you wake up. I'll simply keep you company."

Newt felt full in a way he hadn't since before the Drift. He had Hermann, and probably a new god-son named Stacker that he would spoil rotten, and Mako would teach Japanese, and Raleigh would teach the typical jock things to, and Tendo's baby would probably be his best friend, and they would all go into the future not knowing what was coming next.

Before he drifted away completely, Newt scowled, taking hold of Hermann's hand and laced their fingers together.

"I swear there's a name for this but I just don't remember."

And then he drifted off into the first peaceful sleep since the closing of the breach to the warm sound of Hermann's soft laughter.


End file.
